ACROSS
1 Seize
6 Just slightly
10 Lip-__
14 Justice
nominated by
Barack
15 Buddy, in slang
16 Secure with
lines
17 Cut most likely to
win a BBQ
competition?
19 TT automaker
20 Part of
21 Feminine side
22 Keyboard
shortcuts
24 TV scientist with
19 Emmys
25 Keurig coffee for
the big day?
27 Tear drier
29 Richmond-to-
D.C. direction
30 Hunk’s pride
31 Finishes second
34 Deli order
35 Rental to get the
twins to college?
38 Word before or
after pack
39 Nearly
40 Asian New Year
41 Harmless cyst
43 They’re tossed
up before they’re
made
47 Sports
competitions in
anti-gravity?
51 Uganda’s Amin
52 Ciudad Juárez
neighbor
53 It’s crude, then
refined
54 Bit of cabinet
hardware
55 Money box
56 Ring up a short
story writer?
59 Bering Sea
barker
60 Impromptu
modern group
pic
61 King Triton’s
mermaid
daughter
62 Poet __ St.
Vincent Millay
63 Boys, to men
64 Commencement
celebrants
DOWN
1 Org. that makes
cents
2 Woody’s wife
3 Repeals
4 It meant nothing
to Edith Piaf
5 Buddy
6 Chicago 7 first
name
7 Rodeo bucker
8 Writer/illustrator
Falconer known
for “Olivia”
children’s books
9 Stan “__” Musial
10 Big wet one
11 “I’m not making
that decision”
12 “For sure!”
13 Baked fruit
desserts
18 Rare blood
designation
23 Dogfish Head
brew
25 “Star Trek” role
for Takei and Cho
26 “To recap ... ”
28 Pick out of a
crowd
32 Bell tower sound
33 Long fish
34 Secretary of
Agriculture under
Nixon
35 Smartphone
arrangement
36 “Knock on
wood”
37 Craigslist caveat
38 Wrote back
40 Fly around the
equator?
41 Actor Bentley
42 It included a
sweet, not
sorrowful,
parting
44 Sunflower
relative
45 Doted on
46 Delphic diviners
48 Lily plant
49 “Not __!”
50 Cock and bull
54 Broadway’s
Walter __ Theatre
57 Classified ad
shorthand for
“seeking”
58 Folklore crone
By Ed Sessa
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/05/17
10/05/17
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Thursday, October 5, 2017
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
J
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UNIVERSAL PICTURES
‘American Made’ bores
You may not know the name
Barry Seal, but you know his
story. You know Pablo Escobar,
the Iran-Contra Affair, American
paternalism
towards
Central
America. You know
the
American
Dream.
“American
Made” tells a story
not so much based
on,
but
rather
loosely inspired by,
Seal’s life, who, as
depicted in the film,
was a commercial
pilot-turned-CIA operative (Tom
Cruise, “The Mummy”) tasked
with taking aerial photographs of
communists in Nicaragua, then
with delivering captured Russian
arms to the Contras in Honduras,
who then became a drug runner
for
the
Medellín
Cartel
in
Colombia (serving a young Pablo
Escobar). He was punished by the
U.S. government not with prison
but with a promotion, assigned
to manufacture and capture
evidence that the communist
Sandinistas in Nicaragua were
working in the drug trade with
the Medellín Cartel. It was the
’80s. And it was crazy.
And the film knows it. It draws
heavily from its predecessors —
black comedies that highlight
episodes in capitalist power
and collapse in recent history,
like “The Wolf of Wall Street”
and “The Big Short”— and
appropriates
the
bombastic
narrator, who addresses the
audience with a sly satisfaction
and promises if not warns
that everything you see really
happened.
That’s good enough for Cruise,
whose recent roles (the last five
of which are three different
franchises
and
two
science
fiction action films) read more
like the bad side of a big studio
contract than a quality film guide.
He’s in a different
mode here (and,
to note, at $50
million, which is
no small amount,
this is the tightest
budget
of
a
Cruise movie in
ten years). He’s
got the charisma,
sure, but at the
film’s key moments, for better or
worse (and it’s often the latter),
Cruise seems locked into one
emotion:
effortless
cool,
yet
astonished
and
bewildered.
Every crest has a trough, and
Cruise doesn’t sufficiently dive
into depths of paranoia and
despair that defines his life
after his CIA career in the film’s
denouement.
If there are other characters,
they’re barely drawn. Excusable
is Seal’s CIA contact, Monty
Schafer
(Domhnall
Gleeson,
“Brooklyn”), who serves as a
plot driver, but inexcusable is
Seal’s long-suffering wife, Lucy
(Sarah Wright, “Marry Me”),
who is given so little to do, it’s as
if second-time screenwriter Gary
Spinelli (“Stash House”) hasn’t
paid attention to years and years
of disappointment and anger over
poorly written female roles. Lucy
gets angry with Barry at first, and
then takes the ride for the money,
and we know nothing of how
she’s really feeling.
The problem is that while
antecedents of “American Made”
are well directed and acted on top
of a compelling story, “American
Made” can only claim the last of
those attributes. Doug Liman,
the otherwise competent but
not outstanding director behind
“The Bourne Identity” and the
more recent Cruise action film
“Edge of Tomorrow,” is the weak
link here. Handed on a plate
an absurdly great plot, Liman
mangles his film with utterly
bizarre
filmmaking
choices.
In order to ape the sort of faux
documentary style promulgated
by “The Big Short” and “The
Wolf of Wall Street,” Liman
features a number of cut-aways
to photographs and historical
footage, but none help move the
story along. Cinematographer
César
Charlone
(“Blindness”)
escalates the shaky camera work
of “The Big Short” to something
much more dizzying, if not
nauseating, though sometimes.
The worst offense is a seemingly
absent understanding of how
shots ought to be constructed.
Charlone’s cinematography is
beyond chaotic: it’s an assault on
spatial logic. It’s hard to describe,
but the best analogy at hand
currently is if the director were
a spastic eight-year-old given a
35mm camera and instructed to
make a two-hour film in just as
much time. All the more stranger
is that Tom Cruise, one of the
biggest movie stars of all time,
appears in nearly every slipshod
frame. Liman may have been
visually uninteresting before, but
with “American Made” he verges
into visual repugnancy.
“American
Made”
Universal Pictures
Ann Arbor 20,
Quality 16
DANNY HENSEL
Daily Arts Writer
SALVATORE DIGIOIA, DAILY ARTS WRITER/DAILY
On A$AP Mob tour, Rocky
is a circus ringmaster
When Yams and Bari first
launched A$AP Mob more
than a decade ago, their vision
expanded well beyond the
boundaries of rap: Together,
the duo recruited a diverse
collective
of
creative-types
and took critical early steps to
broadcast their Harlem-gone-
Hollywood style. Both imagery
and aesthetic were vital to
the Mob’s branding from the
start, with fashion adding an
extra vehicle through which
music
could
be
marketed.
From this tradition stemmed
popular hits, buzzy streetwear
labels and short films, projects
that often feel disconnected
creatively, yet are united by
their now-famous mantra.
But what exactly is the
A$AP mantra, if not solely
a
promotional
prop?
It
was once natural to view
the
group
as
a
tight-knit
fraternity,
its
members
a
#rare blend of neighborhood
connections who, for obvious
reasons, found it mutually
beneficial to link and build
beneath
a
common
alias.
Since
Yams’s
heartbreaking
passing in 2015, though, unity
among its members has felt
opportunistic: It’s difficult to
imagine Rocky — the Mob’s
staple A-list celebrity, who
models for Dior and has dated
a Jenner — hanging out with
his old pals when business isn’t
involved. Plus, the addition of
an out-of-towner — Atlanta’s
Playboi Carti — best known for
revitalizing East Coast hip-hop
is rather diluting of its ethos.
Amid
this
mild
identity
crisis, A$AP Mob has released
a new crew tape — Cozy
Tapes Vol. 2: Too Cozy — and
launched a North American
tour. Both ventures aim to
satisfy (or at least quiet) fans’
hunger for new music from
Rocky, who has not released
a solo album in almost three
years. Yet, despite the rapper’s
natural role as the traveling
circus’s ringmaster, he is not
its exclusive headliner: The
Too Cozy Tour exists to bring
lesser-watched
members
of
A$AP — such as Twelvyy, who
also released a solo album
in
#Awgest
(read:
August)
— into fully packed theaters
nationwide.
It’s in this vein that A$AP
Mob
arrived
at
Detroit’s
Masonic Temple on Fri., Sept.
29th, luring a flood of mostly
college and late-high-school-
aged kids downtown for a
full night of hip-hop-inspired
mosh pits. By 8:00 p.m., the
general admission pit’s crowd
was already spilling over its
brims, its tightly-packed (and
mostly intoxicated) attendees
screaming along as recent hits
like “Bodak Yellow” and “XO
Tour Llif3” helped pass the
time.
Once A$AP Nast emerged on
stage, the show was underway.
Despite
lacking
depth
in
his discography, Nast is a
profound technical rapper true
to the spirit of New York, and
his performances of boom-
bap tracks “Nasty’s World”
and “Trillmatic” allowed him
to prove so. He was followed
promptly by A$AP Twelvyy,
who — coming off the heels
of his long-overdue debut LP,
12 — used his time to perform
gritty solo cuts that wouldn’t
otherwise fit into the night’s
turnt-up setlist.
After
opening
with
“Periodic
Table,”
Twelvyy
warned
Detroiters
to
“put
(their) guns up,” then dove
into
ammunition-themed
anthem “Strapped,” which was
followed by “Ea$t$ideGho$t.”
Before rapping the latter, he
proudly announced that the
Mob has been visiting the city
since its inaugural touring
effort —the Long Live A$AP
Tour — in 2013, a notion
that
morbidly
dated
their
joint
shenanigans,
at
least
slightly. He then closed with
the inspiring “LYBB (Last
Year Being Broke),” earning
consistent
feedback
during
its choruses, and departed
from the stage, only to return
shortly thereafter.
When A$AP Mob finally
stormed the stage as a troop,
walking
out
to
epilepsy-
inducing
flashes
and
the
explosive
“Yamborghini
High,” it was Rocky who stood
front and center, briefly by his
lonesome, with an Off-White
belt dangling in his trail,
holding
up
paint-splattered
jeans. In the background were
two
Lamborghini
vehicles,
parked and converted into
luxury DJ booths, plus a parade
of his cohorts, acknowledging
of their sidekick statuses.
Though the songs performed
across the next hour came
mostly from the group’s joint
projects
(“Telephone
Calls”
and “Crazy Brazy” off the first
Cozy Tapes; “Blowin’ Minds,”
“Black Card” and many more
from
the
second),
Rocky
managed
to
maintain
the
spotlight throughout, acting
as a master of ceremonies.
Before “Please Shut Up,” he set
the tone by asking the crowd:
“How many people got that
boss or parent that y’all just
want to smack the shit out
of?” Then, backtracking only
slightly, added: “But they got
this thing called the law… So, if
you don’t wanna go to jail, you
can calmly, politely ask that
person…”
“Please shut up!” the crowd
gleefully roared in response.
“Bahamas”
received
a
similarly
enticing
introduction,
with
Rocky
probing fans to open up mosh
pits through teases like, “Y’all
niggas ain’t ever been to a
A$AP Mob concert?” It was
followed by Twelvyy’s “Hop
Out,” then a brief ode to Ferg,
who skipped Detroit despite
being an otherwise regular
part of the tour.
Even
when
sharing
the
spotlight,
though,
Rocky
remained
in
total
control,
earning
the
night’s
most
emphatic reactions during his
a cappella lead-ins to songs
such as “Multiply” and “Feel
So Good.” Appropriately, “Get
That Bag” — which features all
members of A$AP Mob — was
one of the night’s final songs.
However, as if the show simply
could not end without a total
acknowledgement of Rocky’s
core status, it was followed by
a raucous solo cut of his.
“We are not letting this
nigga A$AP Rocky leave this
stage. He’s too hot!” said
someone, it barely matters
who.
Sure
enough,
Rocky
swiftly returned for a final
verse, one which everyone was
expected to know.
“Who the jiggy nigga with
the gold links?”
Who else but Lord Pretty
Flacko Jodye, the leader — and
still the primary selling point
— of the entire A$AP Mob?
SALVATORE DIGIOIA
Daily Arts Writer
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